A Masonic Time Machine
By
Sir Knight Kenneth W. Davis, Ph.D.
S
everal years ago, at the Colorado ing to visit?”
River Fall Festival in Laughlin,
Hmm, I thought. This brother is clearNevada, I found myself in the ly a crackpot, but as an intellectual exerhotel bar, sitting next to a brother cise, his question fascinated me. “Ok,” I
whose name and state I’ve promised said. “I’ll work on that.”
to always hael. As we talked, we disI’ve kept in touch with the brother,
covered each other’s interest in both and he keeps saying he’s close to solvthe western esoteric tradition and ing the technological problem. When I
contemporary science.
spoke to him last week, he claimed to
After a couple of glasses of a very be just weeks away from a solution. I’ve
good rye, he said, “Brother Ken, I am heard that before, but I’ve had fun makgoing to tell you something I have never ing the list for him.
told anyone else. I am working on a Masonic time machine.”
1. The Lodge of Edinburgh,
My first reaction was that the rye was
July 3, 1634
talking, but the brother was compelling,
and I thought it would be amusing to
The Lodge of Edinburgh, also called
keep listening.
“Mary’s Chapel,” is the oldest Masonic
“I have discovered,” he said, “that rit- Lodge still meeting. At the time of its
ual magic really works at the quantum first known minutes, July 1599, it was
level and that Masonic ritual contains a Lodge of operative Masons, but on
enough authentic magic that it opens July 3, 1634, it admitted the first three
up a time portal whenever a lodge is known speculative Masons, all memopened. At this end of the portal, the bers of the Scots nobility.
ritual magic isn’t enough, so some subatomic technology is required. I am
2. Warrington, England,
working on that right now, but I expect
October 16, 1646
soon to be able to observe—without interfering and without being seen—any
On this date, Elias Ashmole, the first
Masonic lodge meeting in the past.”
known English speculative Mason, was
“Brother Ken,” he continued, “you initiated. A scholar, Ashmole may have
seem to know more about Masonic been interested in the esoteric elements
history than I do.” “It can’t be much of the craft, elements that may have almore,” I replied. “Masonic history isn’t ready been in place in operative Lodges.
my specialty.”
Ashmole had a large library and col“Still, I trust you,” he said. “Could lection of curios that he donated to Oxyou put together a list of, say, ten past ford University. This donation provided
lodge meetings that would be interest- the basis for Oxford’s Ashmolean Mu-
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seum, perhaps Europe’s first public museum. It is still in use.
The Goose and Gridiron, London
Elias Ashmole
3. The Goose and Gridiron,
London, June 24, 1717
Any list of important Lodge meetings
would have to include this one. On Saint
John’s Day of 1717, four London Lodges—
three mostly operative, one mostly speculative—gathered at the Goose and Gridiron
knight templar
and formed the world’s first Grand Lodge,
the Lodge of London and Westminster.
The four Lodges were named after
the pubs where they met: the Goose
and Gridiron, the Crown, the Apple Tree
Tavern, and the Rummer and Grapes.
4. St. Andrew Lodge,
Boston, December 16, 1773
The minutes of this meeting, held at
The Green Dragon, Boston
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the Green Dragon Tavern, state that it
closed early for low attendance. Tradition has it that Masons left the meeting
to participate in the Boston Tea Party
that night, boarding British ships and
dumping their cargo of heavily taxed tea
into Boston Harbor.
This assumption raises at least two
questions: How did the anti-British
Masons square their actions with their
obligation to not commit treason?
And how well did the lodge observe
the landmark rule of not discussing
politics? Some members of St. Andrew
were Tories, supporters of British rule
in North America.
A few members of St. Andrew likely
did participate in the Boston Tea Party
that night, but it’s doubtful that plans
were made there.
5. The Irish Military Lodge 441,
Boston, March 6, 1775
At this meeting, also in Boston, Prince
Hall became the first known African
American Mason. A former slave, he was
Prince Hall
14
freed by 1770. Turned down by a British
colonial Lodge, he was initiated by an
Irish military Lodge.
6. La Loge des Neuf Sœurs,
Paris, April 4, 1778
British rule was, of course, overthrown, and the new country was struggling to create a government and define
its place in the world. Benjamin Franklin,
one of the most learned of the Founding
Fathers, spoke French and was named
ambassador to France, the country that
had given the most support to the American Revolution.
In Paris, Franklin joined the Lodge
of the Nine Sisters (named for the nine
Muses) and began making the acquaintance of the country’s intelligentsia. On
April 4, 1778, he escorted France’s leading writer, Voltaire, to a Lodge meeting, where he was made a Mason. Voltaire died the following month. In 1779,
Franklin became the Lodge’s master.
Voltaire
february 2015
the cornerstone of a Capitol building.
Presiding in full Masonic regalia was
President George Washington.
The cornerstone itself has been lost
in two hundred years of remodeling.
Benjamin Franklin
7. Three Lodges in the District of
Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia,
September 18, 1793
On this date, Masons from three
Lodges in the area—Maryland’s Lodge
9, Virginia’s Alexandria Lodge 22, and
Washington’s Federal Lodge 15—processed to a rise variously called “Jenkins
Hill” and “New Troy” to Masonically lay
Laying of the Capitol Cornerstone
knight templar
Christopher “Kit” Carson
8. Montezuma Lodge 109,
Santa Fe, New Mexico,
December 26, 1854
As a New Mexican, I
have to include on my
list the raising of pioneer
and army scout, Christopher “Kit” Carson, to the
degree of Master Mason.
In 1854, the New Mexico
Territory had been part
of the United States for
just four years. No Grand
Lodge had been established in New Mexico
(that wouldn’t happen
until 1877), and Monte15
zuma Lodge was chartered by the Grand
Lodge of Missouri. Today this Lodge is
Montezuma Lodge 1.
Carson’s home, in Taos, New Mexico,
is now owned by Bent Lodge No. 42 and
operated as a museum.
9. Absalom zu den drei Nesseln,
Hamburg, Germany, May 26, 1945
Along with Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, the disabled, and others, an estimated 80,000 to 200,000 Masons were
murdered in the Holocaust. The number
is difficult to determine since many Masons also fell into other categories.
Hamburg fell to the Allies on May 4,
1945, and the war in Europe ended four
days later. The first Lodge meeting after
the war took place less than three weeks
after that, on May 26. It’s hard to imagine the mix of grief and celebration that
must have been shared by the members.
10. Beech Grove Lodge, Indiana,
October 15, 1948
In 1945, Vice President Harry S. Truman, Past Grand Master of Masons in
Missouri, succeeded President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, also a Mason, upon his
death. In 1948, now-President Truman
ran for that office for the first time.
A whistle-stop campaign tour brought
Truman to Indiana. One version of that
visit recounts that when the president
finished an afternoon speech, he recognized a young Navy sailor, Donald Earl
Bauermeister, who served on the presidential yacht. Truman asked Bauermeister what had brought him to Indiana, and
the young man answered that he was
from Indiana and that evening was being
raised to Master Mason in Beech Grove,
a small town at the edge of Indianapolis.
President Harry S Truman Visiting Beech Grove Lodge for the Raising of Donald
Earl Bauermeister (standing far left)
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february 2015
The president offered Bauermeister
and his father a ride to Indianapolis on
the presidential train and that night attended the meeting of Beech Grove
Lodge with the young sailor. Like any
other first-time guest, Truman had to establish his credentials and was, of course,
addressed in Lodge not as “Mr. President” but as “Most Worshipful Brother.”
It’s said that when Truman’s Secret Service detail protested not being able to enter the Lodge room, the president replied,
“I am safer there than in the White House.”
That’s my list. I’ve sent it to my inventor brother. I wonder if we’ll ever get to
use it. As for this account, that’s my story,
and I’m sticking to it.
What lodge meetings would you add
to the list? Send your nominations to
[email protected].
Dr. Kenneth W. Davis is a Fellow
of the Masonic Society and review
editor of the Journal of the Masonic
Society. Past Master of Lodge Vitruvian 767, Indiana, Sir Knight Ken is
currently chaplain of both Albuquerque Lodge No. 60 and the Lodge of
Research of New Mexico. He is professor emeritus of English at Indiana
University and an independent researcher and author. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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